B. God’s sovereign choice (9:6–29)
B. God’s sovereign choice (9:6–29)
Has God’s plan gone awry? No indeed, says Paul. The present condition of Israel reproduces a pattern of divine action and human response which has been unfolded often enough in the past. Some have always opened their hearts to God’s revelation, while others have hardened theirs; and by the variety of their response they have shown whether or not they were among those on whom God had set his sovereign choice.
Paul has already pointed out (2:28–29) that the true Jew is the one whose life brings forth praise to God, that natural descent and physical circumcision are not the things that matter most. Now he points out in similar vein that not all the descendants of Israel are Israelites in the inward sense, that not all the descendants of Abraham are ‘children of Abraham’ in the spiritual sense which has been explained in chapter 4. Throughout Old Testament history God’s purpose was handed down through an inner group, an elect minority, a saving remnant. Abraham had a number of sons, but only through one of them, Isaac, the child of promise, was the line of God’s promise to be traced. Isaac in his turn had two sons, but only through one of them, Jacob, was the holy seed transmitted. And God’s choice of Jacob and passing over of his brother Esau did not in the least depend on the behaviour or character of the twin brothers; he had declared it in advance before they were born.
So today, Paul implies, when some receive the light and others do not, the divine election may be discerned, operating antecedently to the will or activity of those who are its objects. If God does not reveal the principles on which he makes his choice, that is no reason why his justice should be called in question. He is merciful and compassionate because such is his will. ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’, and least of all when it is God who shows mercy; for if he were compelled to be merciful by some cause outside himself, not only would his mercy be so much the less mercy, but he himself would be so much the less God.
Nor is it only in his dealings with the ‘chosen seed of Israel’s race’ that this principle operates. It can be seen in the Exodus story of his dealings with the king of Egypt, who stubbornly and repeatedly refused to let Israel go. Why did God endure Pharaoh’s obstinacy so long? He supplies the answer himself: ‘for this purpose have I let you live, to show you my power, so that my name may be declared throughout all the earth’ (Exod. 9:16). All the recalcitrance and rebellion of a man like Pharaoh will never avail to thwart the purpose of God; God’s glory will triumph, whether man obeys or not.
Well, the retort comes, if God foreordains people’s ways by his own will, why does he blame them for their ways? They do not oppose his will; they act in accordance with it.
‘My good sir,’ is Paul’s reply, ‘who are you to answer back to God?’ And he takes up the analogy of a potter and his pots, which came as readily to Hebrew prophets as it did to Omar Khayyam. Jeremiah learnt a lesson about God’s dealings with his people the day he went down to the potter’s house and saw how the potter moulded the clay as he saw fit, squeezing a vessel that had gone wrong into a shapeless lump so as to make a new vessel out of it again (Jer. 18:1–10).
It may be granted that the analogy of a potter and his pots covers one aspect only of the Creator’s relation to those whom he has created, especially to human beings, created in his own image. Pots are not made in the potter’s image, and they do not in any case answer him back or find fault with his workmanship. But there are different ways of answering him back. There is the answering back of faith, as when a Job or a Jeremiah calls out for an account of God’s mysterious ways with him. Even the Christ on the cross could cry, ‘why hast thou forsaken me?’ But when the man or woman of faith cries out like this, it is from a fundamental conviction that God is all-righteous as well as all-powerful. There is, on the other hand, the answering back of unbelief and disobedience, when an attempt is made to put God in the dock and sit in judgment on him. It is the person who adopts this attitude whom Paul, like Isaiah, rebukes so sternly and reminds of his creaturely status.
Woe to him who strives with his Maker,
an earthen vessel with the potter!Does the clay say to him who fashions it, ‘What are you making?’
or ‘Your work has no handles’? (Isa. 45:9).
Paul has been misunderstood and unjustly criticized through failure to recognize that it is the God-defying rebel and not the bewildered seeker after God whose mouth he so peremptorily shuts. God, in his grace, does abide his people’s question, but he will not be cross-examined at the judgment bar of a hard and impenitent heart.
Suppose that God wishes to display his righteous judgment and his power, says Paul, why should he not bear patiently with people like Pharaoh—pots (to carry on the metaphor) fashioned to be object-lessons of his wrath, fit only to be destroyed? And why should he not display the greatness of his glory by means of other ‘pots’ which are to be the object-lessons of his mercy, prepared in advance for this glorious purpose? Paul, more cautious than some of his systematizers, does not say outright that God does this, but asks, ‘What if he does so? Who will bring him to book?’
While Paul will allow no questioning of God’s right to do what he will with his own, he lets his emphasis fall, not on God’s wrath towards the reprobate, but rather on the postponement of his wrath against those who have long since become ripe for destruction. As has been pointed out earlier (2:4), the mercy and forbearance of God are intended to afford people time for repentance; if, instead, they harden their hearts yet more, as Pharaoh did after repeated respites, they are simply storing up an increasing weight of retribution for themselves against the day of requital.
In some schools of theological thought, unfortunately, the doctrine of election has been formulated too much on the basis of this preliminary stage in Paul’s present argument, without adequate account being taken of his further exposition of God’s purpose in election at the conclusion of the argument (11:25–32). Yet this stage of his argument is undeniably in line with well-known facts of life which present a problem for any theodicy. Some people have better spiritual opportunities than others; and of those who have equal opportunities some profit by them and others do not. Some nations have received more gospel light than others, and are correspondingly accountable to God. Men and women who have experienced the forgiving grace of God will always wonder why their eyes should have been opened while the eyes of others remain closed.
The point on which Paul insists here is that all are guilty before God; no-one has a claim on his grace. If he chooses to extend his grace to some, the others have no ground for arguing that he is unjust because he does not extend it to them. If it is justice they demand, they can have it, but—
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation.3
In point of fact, as appears with blessed clarity later in Paul’s argument, God’s grace is far wider than anyone could have dared to hope; but just because it is grace, no-one is entitled to it, and no-one can demand that God should give an account of the reasons for which he bestows his grace, or that he should bestow it otherwise than in fact he does. Grace in its sovereignty may impose conditions, but it cannot be made subject to them.
But God delights to show mercy, and he has lavished it on men and women beyond counting—from Gentiles and Jews alike. The fact that Gentiles as well as Jews are among those whom he has called and marked out for glory is illustrated by quotations from the prophet Hosea.
For centuries the Gentiles had been looked upon by the chosen people, with but few exceptions, as ‘vessels of wrath made for destruction’; and certainly God had ‘endured’ them ‘with much patience’. But now the purpose of his patience was made plain: what he desired was not their doom but their salvation.
And if Israel at present had to such a large extent turned away from God, yet the same pattern of divine action would be reproduced among them too. Here Paul calls on Isaiah as witness to his hope.
In a day of widespread national apostasy Isaiah saw that judgment would fall on Israel and Judah on such a scale that only a handful, the merest ‘remnant’, would survive. Yet in this remnant he saw the hope of the future embodied; God’s purposes and promises to his people Israel, and through them to other nations, would not be frustrated, provided a remnant emerged from the crucible of invasion, defeat and exile, to become the nucleus of a new and purified Israel. The ‘saved’ remnant would thus be also a ‘saving’ remnant.
This remnant Paul sees embodied anew in that minority of Jews who, like himself, had acknowledged Jesus as Lord; a minority they might be, but their existence was a guarantee of a wholesale turning to the Lord on a day to come. This hope is developed more fully later (in chapter 11); meanwhile, he turns his attention to another reason for the bestowal of gospel blessings for the present on Gentiles rather than Jews.
7. ‘Through Isaac shall your descendants be named.’ A quotation from Genesis 21:12, where God tells Abraham not to oppose Sarah’s demand for the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, because his descendants are to be reckoned through Isaac, and not through Ishmael—although Ishmael too will be the ancestor of a nation, ‘because he is your offspring’ (Gen. 21:13).
8. It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as descendants. The ‘children of the promise’ in Paul’s exegesis are those who, like Abraham, believe the promise of God and are therefore Abraham’s spiritual offspring. Compare 4:11–18, and also the ‘allegory’ which Paul draws out of the Isaac-Ishmael narrative in Galatians 4:22–31.
9. ‘About this time I will return and Sarah shall have a son.’ A quotation from Genesis 18:10, ‘I will surely return to you in the spring, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.’ This was the ‘promise’ in accordance with which Isaac was born—the promise which provoked Sarah to laughter (Gen. 18:12; cf. 21:6).
11. Not because of works but because of his call. Cf. 8:28 for the ‘call’ which is in accordance with God’s purpose.
12. ‘The elder will serve the younger.’ From the birth oracle to Rebekah (Gen. 25:23). The prophecy relates not to the individuals Esau and Jacob (for Esau never rendered service to Jacob) but to their descendants; it relates to the long periods during which the Edomites were in servitude to Israel or Judah (cf. 2 Sam. 8:14; 1 Kgs 22:47; 2 Kgs 14:7; etc.).
13. ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ From Malachi 1:2–3, where again the context indicates it is the nations Israel and Edom, rather than their individual ancestors Jacob and Esau, that are in view. The way in which communities can be so freely spoken of in terms of their ancestors is an example of the common oscillation in biblical (and especially Old Testament) thought and speech between individual and corporate personality (cf. exposition of 5:12–21, p. 130, n. 22). Israel was the elect nation, and Edom incurred the wrath of God for its unbrotherly conduct towards Israel in the day of Israel’s calamity (cf. Ps. 137:7; Isa. 34:5ff.; Jer. 49:7ff.; Ezek. 25:12ff.; 35:1ff.; Obad. 10ff.).
15. ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ Quoted from Exodus 33:19, where God replies to Moses’ request to let him see his glory, after Moses’ intercession for the Israelites because of their worship of the golden calf (cf. note on verse 3, p. 185). The force of the words is that the mercy and compassion of God cannot be subject to any cause outside his own free grace. (These, incidentally, are the two primary divine attributes in the Qur’ān: ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.’)
16. It depends not upon man’s will or exertion, but upon God’s mercy. Again it is emphasized that God’s mercy has its cause in himself, and not in human will or activity. ‘Exertion’ is literally ‘running’, used of vigorous action, as also in Galatians 2:2; Philippians 2:16, where the reference is to Paul’s apostolic energy.
17. The scripture says to Pharaoh. ‘The scripture’ (here Exod. 9:16) is practically personified here as a surrogate for the name of God, who is the actual speaker. Cf. Galatians 3:8, ‘the scripture … preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham’ (a reference to the divine promise of Gen. 12:3). The Pharaoh is the Pharaoh of the Exodus (successor to the ‘Pharaoh of the oppression’ whose death is noted in Exod. 2:23).
‘I have raised you up …’ The Hebrew uses the causative conjugation of the verb ‘āmad, lit. ‘I made you stand’, which Paul renders by the verb exegeirō, ‘raise up’, LXX renders ‘you were preserved’. The preference may be not only to God’s raising up Pharaoh to be king, but to his patience in preserving him alive for so long, in spite of his disobedience.
‘… for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.’ Cf. Exodus 15:14–15; Joshua 2:10–11; 9:9; 1 Samuel 4:8, for the effect produced on other nations by the news of the exodus and attendant events.
18. So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills. The first part of this verse is a further echo of Exodus 33:19 (cf. verse 15 above); the second part refers to the occasions on which God is said to ‘harden’ the hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians (Exod. 7:3; 9:12; 14:4, 17).
20. Will what is moulded say to its moulder, ‘Why have you made me thus?’ See, in addition to Isaiah 45:9, quoted above (p. 189), Isaiah 29:16:
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay;
that the thing made should say of its maker,
‘He did not make me’;or the thing formed say of him who formed it,
‘He has no understanding’?
God is not answerable to us for what he does. Yet he can be relied on to act in consistency with his character, which has been disclosed supremely in Christ. With such a God to trust, why should any of his people question his ways?
21. One vessel for beauty and another for menial use. Cf. 2 Timothy 2:20, where, however, the vessels are made of various materials, and those which are for ‘ignoble’ use are designed for less ornamental (but not necessarily less serviceable) purposes than those which are ‘for noble use’. Parallels to Paul’s present analogy from the potter’s diverse products are found in Wisdom 15:7; Ecclesiasticus 33:10–13.
22. The vessels of wrath made for destruction. Not the instruments of his wrath by which he works destruction (cf. Isa. 13:5; 54:16; Jer. 50:25), but objects of his wrath, whose ‘end is destruction’ (Phil. 3:19).
25–26. ‘Those who were not my people I will call “my people”, and her who was not beloved I will call “my beloved”.’ A free rendering of Hosea 2:23, ‘I will have pity on Not pitied, and I will say to Not my people, “You are my people”.’ The Hosea prophecy came into general use in the early church as a testimonium of the Gentile mission; compare the similar application of Hosea 2:23 to Gentile Christians in 1 Peter 2:10.
Hosea learnt to see in the tragedy of his domestic life a parable of the relation between God and Israel. When he married Gomer the daughter of Diblaim and she in due course gave birth to a son, he acknowledged the child as his and named him Jezreel. But her second and third children, he was convinced, were not his, and the names he gave them expressed his disillusionment—Lo-ruhamah (‘one for whom no natural affection is felt’) and Lo-ammi (‘no kin of mine’). These names betokened God’s attitude to his people Israel, who had broken their covenant-loyalty to him—Lo-ruhamah (‘not the object of my affection, or pity’) and Lo-ammi (‘not my people’). But, for old time’s sake, God will not allow this broken relationship to remain so for ever; he looks forward to a day when those who at present are not his people will once more be his people, and when those who at present have no claim on his kindly feelings will once more be the objects of his compassion.
What Paul does here is to take this promise, which referred to a situation within the frontiers of the chosen people, and extract from it a principle of divine action which in his day was reproducing itself on a world-wide scale. In large measure through Paul’s own apostolic ministry, great numbers of Gentiles, who had never been ‘the people of God’ and had no claim on his covenant mercy, were coming to be enrolled among his people and to be the recipients of his mercy. The scale of the divine action was far wider than in Hosea’s day, but the same pattern and principle were recognizable. Through the Gentile mission, in lands where the people of God had once been unrepresented, there were now many believers who were acknowledged as ‘sons of the living God’ (verse 26, quoted from Hos. 1:10).
27. ‘Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved.’ Quoted from Isaiah 10:22a. The plain meaning of these words is that, numerous as Israel may be, only a remnant, a small minority, will survive the impending judgment (in which God will use the Assyrians as his agents) and return from exile. But if only a remnant will survive, at least a remnant will survive and constitute the hope of restoration. Not only will the remnant return from exile, but ‘a remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God’ (Isa. 10:21). This recurring theme of Isaiah’s prophecy was given as a name to his elder son Shear-jashub (‘Remnant will return’), who was thus a living ‘sign’ to the people of the truth of God’s message given through his father (Isa. 7:3; 8:18). Paul applies the ‘remnant doctrine’ of Isaiah to the religious situation of his own day here, and again in 11:5.
28. For the Lord will execute his sentence upon the earth with rigour and dispatch. An abridgement of Isaiah 10:23, following on from the quotation in the previous verse.
29. ‘If the Lord of hosts had not left us children, we would have fared like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah.’ Quoted from Isaiah 1:9. In a time of acute peril for Judah and Jerusalem under the Assyrian invasion, Isaiah uses this language, meaning in effect: ‘If God had not spared a remnant among us (“the mere germ of a nation”, NEB), we should have been wiped out as completely as Sodom and Gomorrah’ (cf. Gen. 19:24). Paul, following LXX, says ‘the Lord of Sabaoth’, leaving Heb. ṣĕbā’ōt (‘hosts’, ‘armies’) untranslated (cf. Jas 5:4).